


Hope May Vanish, But Can Die Not

by DancingInTheStorm



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Gen, family loyalty is fundamental to who Luke Skywalker is, this is the most in-depth character study I’ve ever written wow, tw: suicidal thoughts and (briefly) behaviors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:21:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22220977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DancingInTheStorm/pseuds/DancingInTheStorm
Summary: The life and death of Luke Skywalker.
Relationships: Luke Skywalker & Anakin Skywalker, Luke Skywalker & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 15
Kudos: 49





	Hope May Vanish, But Can Die Not

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning: suicidal thoughts and (very briefly) behaviors.

_to love and bear;_  
_to hope_  
_till Hope creates_  
_from its own wreck_  
_the thing it contemplates_

_\- Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound_

Luke watched the Millennium Falcon blast away in a rattle of determined hope.

He could have stopped it. He knew every corner of that ship, every twisted, restraightened hunk of metal, had fixed everything on the ship at least twice - often frantically, midflight. It would be so, so easy to reach out and shove at the one blasted spot on the engine that invariably threw the ship into a stall. It wouldn’t even hurt Rey, if he did it just right. And he would do it precisely right, with exactness learned from long, painful years of understanding his limits.

He had once watched his father effortlessly destroy an entire rebel unit. He had been terrified.

The truly chilling reality was the ease with which Luke could replicate it, if he so desired. He could have done so far younger than anyone really wanted to admit. One ancient, half-broken ship would be no more trouble than breathing.

He watched it soar away until it was no more than a speck in the distance.

And released his breath. Drew it in again. And slowly let it back out.

Alone on the highest stone at the far corner of Ahch-To, Luke slid gently, painfully, effortlessly, into meditation.

  
He thought of family, first. 

For Luke Skywalker, family always came first.

Even, especially, always for his father.

Even, especially, always for Ben.

(He had hurt Ben so unforgivably, had hurt Ben beyond measure, how could he do that, how could he—

“You’ll make mistakes, boy,” Uncle Owen had told him, several lifetimes ago. “The measure of a man is what he does next.”) 

Uncle Owen. The thought stabilized him, even though the thought of what Uncle Owen would say, should he see Luke now, was to be avoided.

Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru were the bedrock of all that was good in him. It was Aunt Beru who first taught him of life, who loved him like a son in her quiet, strong way. From her, he learned the art of folding compassion into even the most ordinary of tasks, of scrubbing dishes and cooking dinner and fixing vaporators with such tangible, deep care that the dull work was transformed into a tapestry of understated, rock-solid love.

Uncle Owen was his second teacher. The only reason he was second, not first, was because while his wife cared for the young child they had been given, he spent his days supporting his family by toiling away on the vaporators to wring precious water from desert air.

He taught Luke the art of it as soon as Luke could hold a wrench. When Luke thought of sacrifice, he would remember his father, but first he would remember late, tired nights guided by his uncle’s rough hands and gruff voice, who murmured “we work until it’s finished, do you understand, Luke? Your aunt needs the work done, and we promised her we’d do it.”

From Uncle Owen, he learned that family had a duty. Family always had a duty. That was, and would always be, the cornerstone of his life.

  
“Your parents didn’t want you,” Baxter snarled. 

Luke stood, his back cutting a line as sharp as any knife. “They do!” he snapped. “They’ll come and-“

“Look around you, Luke,” Jiana said. Luke turned at her rare use of his name. “Look around,” she continued, soft and devastating. “No one wants us, except the Hutts. Stop pretending life is something else.”

“Leave him,” Biggs said sharply. “Just leave him. Luke, let’s go flying.”

“Fine,” Luke snapped, slamming his chair back into place. “Let’s go.”  
  


“I would have come for you,” his father said softly. “It’s far better I didn’t, but I swear, Luke, I would have come for you if I had known.”

“I know. I’m glad,” Luke said, and was thankful his father didn’t press the point, didn’t point out the aching double meaning.  
  


Somewhere around thirteen, he stopped waiting for his parents and started waiting for his father. 

He wasn’t to know that his Force sensitivity had been growing over the years, had been growing to the point that he could feel the agonized soul-cry of his father half a galaxy away. All Luke knew was his mother was firmly dead, but his _father_ —

—something in Luke knew, even then, that his father missed his dead child as sharply and surely as Luke missed his probably-dead father. 

Perhaps he so earnestly sought his father because Uncle Owen refused to be one. Aunt Beru had no reservations in becoming his mother in all but name, but Uncle Owen always remained firmly an uncle. It was not a lack of love—perhaps it was respect for the dead, or perhaps, Luke thought, much, much later, it was wariness—but while a very young Luke was content with the world of his aunt and uncle, he soon grew to yearn for a father to hold him tight and whisper _my son_ like Bigg’s father did, like his uncle never did.

It was this, ultimately that taught him to hold onto his dreams, to not release his impossible aspirations, to believe in a father when his entire community told him his hopes were pointless. His father would come for him, and show him the stars, Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen somehow content with this in this dreamland of impossible imaginations—

His dreams became a measure more realistic as he aged. Now a young adult, he knew no long-lost father would come to carry him away, but he could carry himself, and the memory of his father too, out into space. He dreamed of flying, had since he was young, but now those dreams had purpose, a meaning so raw and deep that Luke could weep: he was going to touch the stars, the ghost of his father beside him. 

He knew this wasn’t what Uncle Owen meant when this uncle told Luke terse, abbreviated stories of his father, the space pilot, but that was the meaning Luke had crafted for himself. That meaning burned brighter and brighter, a flare turned supernova, until he thought the need for space flight might consume him. 

But family had a duty, and Luke’s duty was to care for his aunt and uncle. The fire in him died a little each year as he waded through the endless, necessary drudgery required to keep a moisture farm running through all seasons. It was painful, grinding against Luke’s mind and soul and body, but he didn’t let himself stop. 

He would think, sometimes, that he could be so much more than this, and then would think, ashamed, that his highest purpose in life would always be to help his family.

But his _father_ —

He got older, his duties got heavier, and his chances of being accepted to the Imperial Academy got smaller. His frustration overboiled in irritable outbursts, angry, lashing, chafing against the array of seemingly endless restraints, chafing against the stubborn flickers of a pilot’s son that refused to burn out. 

He would go to the stars, he vowed. But not yet. Not until his aunt and uncle were well provided for, and if that took him the rest of his life—

The thought was too much. “Uncle Owen!” he called, clambering out of their home. “I’m going to Tosche Station for a bit!”

The silence lingered. Uncle Owen didn’t approve of his “frivolous waste of time,” but he needed a reprieve as surely as he needed air. It wasn’t like he was getting spiced up or anything. 

“Be back by dinner,” Uncle Owen finally called back, and Luke shouted a quick assent, gunning the engine of the landspeeder. 

He flew across the sand, eyes half-shut in overpowering pleasure at the speed, and dreamed of flight.  
  


Flight came far too quickly. Flight came with the death of an uncle, an aunt, a planet. Flight came as his ship shook under him as he dodged Imperial fighters mere feet above the surface of the Death Star.

For comfort, for steadiness, he drew up the image of his father fighting beside him, dodging and rolling away from the fighters at their tail. Fifty feet behind him, Darth Vader was shooting to kill—

Family had a duty. That’s why he refused Ben Kenobi when the old man offered to take him off-planet to the stars. 

Family had a duty. That’s why he turned his face away in shame from the flames of the homestead, from the smoking bones of his aunt and uncle. 

Family had a duty. He had failed his. All that was left for him was Old Ben Kenobi and the endless stars. 

He left quickly, so quickly that the magnitude of his loss didn’t fully catch up to him until he was hours into the flight on Han Solo’s clunker ship. Then, everything caught up to him at once, and he spiraled into a panic attack then and there on the floor of a smuggler’s ship. 

The fire. The smoking corpses. The loss. Loss of family, loss of home, loss of safety.

For the rest of his life, fire and home would be open, weeping wounds. Fire, a devourer. Home, never again to be found on any planet, any ship, any person.

Part of him died that day. The rest of him burned with pain and rage and fury. 

He would rip down the Empire, brick by bloody brick, for what they had done to his family. 

He would follow the footsteps of his father, as he had been trying to do for years. He would become a Jedi. 

(The Jedi had betrayed the Republic, Luke knew, but the Empire was simply the rotting remains of the rotting Republic. He would avenge his family, never mind his bitterly small chances of success. Family had a duty.)

The loss of his family hit him in bursts. He missed his aunt and uncle, but perhaps what he missed most sharply was a small box under his bed, filled with scraps full of things that represented his father. Wires from an engine of a crashed spaceship. A tiny packet of spice, not for consumption, but to remember what sort of flights his father had ran. An old, crumbling flight suit. 

Luke has always meant to bring that box with him when he left the planet. That box had burned down with the homestead, set alight as surely as Aunt Beru’s voice had crumbled down to ash.

Later, he will laugh with bitter unhappiness at the symbolism of his father’s spice trader box burning down days before he met Darth Vader, but at that moment, the loss just hurt, pure and simple—uncomplicated, as it would not be later.

Months after Yavin, he would unthinkingly lean under the bed to touch the box. He touched air, and all at once his loss crushed his lungs. He doubled over, heart cracking.

He thought he’d dealt with the pain, done his weeks of grieving, but no. Everything was raw and flaming and painful, so terribly, terribly painful. He folded onto his bed, silent and still, and didn’t get up for some time. And then he got up. And then he made something meaningful out of his pain.

(He folded onto the medical cot, _I am your father_ burning through his soul, and didn’t get up for some time. And then he got up. And then he made something meaningful out of his pain.)

(He folded onto his stone bed at Ahch-To, a green lightsaber cutting up his heart, and didn’t get up for some time.)

But none of this would happen for some time, yet. Right now, Luke was nineteen, feeling terribly young and terribly old, collapsed on the vibrating deck of a ship full of people, and Luke, alone.

And Luke Skywalker wept.  
  


Then Bespin happened.  
  


Even now, alone on Acht-To, at peace with everyone’s mistakes but his own, Bespin was hard to think about. His father could hardly have picked a worse way of telling him, and Luke could hardly have picked a worse escape. 

He had full well intended to die from the drop—the fact that he didn’t, seen as unhappy fate. Leia knew this, somehow, even without vital context, and was loathe to let him out of her sight for days afterward. 

He had been—not fine, but safe, after the first day, but it warmed him, distantly, to know she cared so much for him. 

Fine had taken longer. Fine hadn’t come until many months after Bespin. That had been one of the lessons he thought he knew, before Ben fell—that fine came only after one took action to make things better.

After Ben, he learned that sometimes fine never came, even after one did all they could.

He had fled to Acht-To for healing, helpless to do anything but follow old patterns. In the wake of Endor, he had sought private solace as much as a Jedi fugitive on the run from the Empire could find a moment of quiet. It had helped—it didn’t quite heal, but it gave a space for healing. 

It gave a space for Luke to come to terms with his new identity.

He had thought his love for his father would shatter when Darth Vader ripped away childhood dreams of a space-pilot father, but it only grew, cautious but sure, when given a real target. He loved his father with an intensity that hurt, that screamed, that kept him awake long into the night. He felt his father through the Force, despairing and broken and cold, and he wept the hot tears his father had sealed away.

And he thought, family has a duty. 

And he thought, hate destroys, but only love can build what the Rebellion was aiming to establish.

And he thought, my grandmother was a slave, and father born into it, and the children follow the mother—

He might have forever oscillated between grief and wary hope, cut off from the world, had Leia not forced his hand by going after Han in an all-too-reckless manner. That meant he needed plans, and contingency plans, and backup. 

So he came again to Tatooine, wreathed in more safety and danger than was reasonable. Safety, for it had not escaped his notice that Father avoided the planet at all costs. Danger, for crime lords remembered the slave-name Skywalker and went out of their way to reclaim lost property a generation down the line. 

He would have to be alert, and he would have to be bold. His model for this, he realized halfway through a Force choke, was not Obi-Wan but Darth Vader.

Like father, like son, but Luke was freeborn and ready to die keeping it that way.

Leia was—

Leia was chained, half-stripped, half-broken at Jabba’s side, and Luke decided then and there that Jabba was going to die if he didn’t immediately release Leia and Han and the droids. 

(Luke was from Tatooine. He knew full well that Jabba would do no such thing.)

Han, dragged out half-blind, was doubtful of Luke’s plan. Han didn’t know what Luke did, that Luke’s greatest danger was not death but of going too far with the Force. They would be getting out of this, one way or another. 

They did get out, Jabba’s barge going down in furnace flame, and Luke immediately swung his cloak around Leia’s naked shoulders. She huddled into it, despite the heat of the suns at double midday. Han’s hand swung around blindly, catching Leia’s hand more by chance than by skill, and Luke stepped back to let the two of them have a moment together.

Then Endor happened. Endor was too painfully sacred to contemplate when he was such a broken mess of a man, so he shifted his meditation to immediately after the Emperor and his father died. 

It had taken him aback, how eager people were to make a legend of him. He hadn’t done anything but reach, yearning, for a father he never knew, and reject the Emperor’s call to the dark side.

(There had been a moment, but—

—moving on.)

His father had killed the Emperor; his father had saved Luke. And since Luke could never tell people that, for fear of losing his place in the New Republic upon telling he was Vader’s son, Luke’s legend of triumph over the Emperor, over Darth Vader, only grew. 

He hated it.

“It’s useful, though,” Leia pointed out, hunched over a document. 

“Yes,” Luke told his father later, “yes it’s useful, but it’s wrong. And Leia—“ He hesitated. “Leia would prefer I really had killed you.”

 _Leia wouldn’t,_ his father said, tired but matter-of-fact. His father was very blunt and straightforward, Luke was learning. _Leia has no love for me, but she wouldn’t want to see you become someone who killed out of hatred._

Luke thought of the fire in Leia’s eyes, an afterimage of Alderaan, and wondered if Leia killed out of hatred. He opened his mouth to ask—

—looked at the man who had killed out of apathetic hatred for years—

—and decided against it.

 _No, she doesn’t kill out of hatred,_ his father said gently. At Luke’s startled, flushed glance, _You were thinking very loudly, my son. Such things echo in the Force._

Luke swallowed. 

_I know what it’s like, killing out of hatred,_ his father murmured, flickering at the edges. _Leia isn’t that. She kills out of her version of justice, not out of hatred._

That—was accurate. Very accurate. It displayed a level of insight that told Luke both that his father was a cleverer man than his brute force would suggest, and that his father was watching over Leia at least as closely as he was watching over Luke.

 _She is my daughter, despite her every right to cut ties,_ said his father. _Yes, I watch her, my Luke._

Luke’s legend continued to grow, unchecked. Luke himself tried to check it, but it turned out he was far, far too late. It had seeded before Luke’s birth, and grown roots from there.

The legend went like this: once upon a time, there was a Jedi named Skywalker who dominated the galactic battlefield (the details changed significantly, depending on whether it was Republican or Separatist telling the story). The Jedi Skywalker died in the final days of the war, but not before he had a son that grew up to destroy the Death Star, lead an unbroken command of a flight crew, and levitate weapons with his mind.

Up to this point, the legend was mostly true, if dramatized. It was when Luke left Endor that things escalated out of control. Without him around to ground legend in reality, and with Rebel Command possessing only the vaguest idea of his whereabouts and true intentions, Luke’s legend became a free-for-all. 

Luke Skywalker. The Commander that disappeared under unknown circumstances in the Evacuation of Hoth, the warrior, the Jedi, the Harbinger of Victory. One swing of his lightsaber, and all enemies fell before him. Disappeared into the Force, but fated to come back when the Rebellion needed him most.

The legends said nothing about how Luke spent most of his time between Bespin and Endor grieving. The legends said everything about how he returned at the Rebellion’s most desperate hour to infiltrate the Death Star and somehow (this part was never clear) trigger the Death Star’s explosive collapse. His refusal to say anything on the subject only fueled the fires of galaxy-wide speculation and awe. 

“It’s unfair,” he told Leia, pacing. “It takes rightful honor away from Lando and everyone else who actually destroyed the second Death Star, and most of it’s complete lies, and—“

“Luke,” Leia said, her voice stopping him in his tracks. “People need a symbol. No one expects you to be all you’re said to be, but people need to believe there’s someone out there who might really be that good.”

Luke nodded, back stiff. 

“Oh, Luke,” she said, words almost a sigh. “Can’t you see? You’re closer to fulfilling your own legend than anyone else I know. That’s why people listen to you.”

Right. Great. No pressure, at all, ever.

 _Expect too much of yourself, you do,_ Yoda advised. _Time you need, to heal, to learn. Rest, you should._

“The last time I disappeared, everyone decided I was some sort of higher power,” Luke said bitterly. “Who’s to say that won’t happen again?”

 _It will,_ Obi-Wan said cheerfully _. It will anyways, with you pulling stunts like successfully raiding the Brigadier Moon singlehandedly. Take a break, Luke._

It was his father pulling him aside to warn him that his father fell partially since he was stretched to his limit without reprieve that convinced Luke to withdraw himself from politics for a time, and it was the new Galactic Senate backstabbing every promise they had ever made to help the Outer Rim that convinced Luke to spend his time giving aid to non-Core planets.

 _Your definition of a break is quite different than mine,_ Obi-Wan said dryly. _Rest, Luke._

Luke sighed and tried doing nothing. He lasted two days, five hours, and approximately thirty-six minutes before he declared to the ghosts, to Leia, and to the room at large that he would go crazy if he had to do nothing for one more minute.

“Stop pacing,” Leia snapped, tossing her pen onto the table. “Go research the Jedi or something. Just stop. Pacing.”

This turned out to be the best suggestion Luke had heard yet, so off he went, setting his legend aside rather dubiously for fear of it growing again in his absence. 

He spent three months drifting from planet to planet, gathering more lore than real information about the Jedi. What he did gather was mostly from a Obi-Wan, Yoda, and his father, who all had a dramatically different perspective on what the Jedi had been. 

What he gathered was this: the Jedi kept themselves aloof from the galaxy, for privacy and protection, and while they perfected ways of fighting and learning, they failed to perfect ways to love one’s family. They, with all the right intentions, separated children from their families very early on, and taught them the dangers of relationships. 

_Attachment_ , his father corrected. _They believed in the dangers of attachment, not relationships._

“They?” Luke asked.

 _I was never a very good Jedi in that regard,_ his father said, _and I don’t consider myself a Jedi anymore._

“Because of how you acted or because of Jedi philosophy?” Luke asked with caution. 

_Both. My reservations with Jedi philosophy would suffice, however._

Luke propped himself on his elbows. “Attachments can certainly be manipulated,” he said, thinking of his father’s trap for him in Cloud City, “but they’re ultimately what give us strength, the love we have for each other.”

 _And that,_ said his father, _is precisely why I want to see you rebuild the Jedi Order. You will do magnificent things with it, Luke._

That was a stretch. Still, Luke resolved that anyone who asked him about the Force would learn the value of relationships long before he taught them anything about how to take a life. The Jedi were well-meaning, but they were arrogant in their solitude and views on relationships. 

He was startled from his musings by Leia calling him. He answered, glad to hear her voice. He thought she had been leaving him alone in order to give him space, but he missed his sister dearly.

“Luke,” she said, and burst into tears. 

Leia wasn’t a crying person. Luke was on his feet in moments. “What’s wrong? What do you need?”

Leia grit her teeth until the tears stopped. “Nothing’s wrong,” she snapped. “Force, I hate this. I love—but I hate—Luke, I’m pregnant,” she said with all the grace of a landlocked whale. “Surprise.”

Family. That was Luke’s first thought. His circle of family expanded by one, then and there. He flew back at once, launching himself out of the ship to throw himself, laughing, into Leia’s arms. She hugged back, navigating her embrace around to the side of her growing stomach, before clearing her throat. “You have about five different political factions that want your opinion on some matters, now that you’re back.”

“Can’t it wait?” Luke groaned, collapsing into Leia’s embrace.

“Not really,” Leia said, breaking off the hug. “There’s a major vote on Core World tariffs tomorrow evening, and you’ve worked up enough interest in the Outer World perspective that people want your input.”

Luke sighed, gritted his teeth. He had needed the break more than he realized, and it was painful to come back to obstinate politicians. However, he felt he had a duty to the Outer Rim, and from that perspective, he should have been back weeks ago to work up political support for the vote. 

“Leia,” he said reluctantly, duty dragging into him, “you should have told me about the vote earlier.”

“You needed a break,” Leia said, not meeting his eyes because she knew what was next.

Luke took his sister by the shoulders. “Leia, you need a break as least as much as I do. You haven’t rested since—“

 _Since Alderaan,_ he didn’t say.

“I want to see peace in the Republic,” she said with a tight smile, not touching the unspoken words. “That means not much rest, and I’d better get used to it with Ben on the way—“

“Ben?” Luke asked. “You mean—“ He nodded at her stomach.

A smile flickered through all her weariness. “Yes. Ben Kenobi was my last hope on the Death Star, and he died stalling Vader for us. I wanted to honor that, somehow, and Han agreed.”

“You know his name was really Obi-Wan,” Luke said absently, turning the name Ben over in his mind. It was a good name. A gentle name. 

“Luke,” Leia said with an uncustomary, flippant tone, “I love that man for what he did for us, but you have to admit that Obi-Wan is hardly a usual name for a child. I’d much rather have a Ben than an Obi-Wan.”

Now that, that stung. Ben was a good name, yes, but also a common Core name. Obi-Wan was much more Outer Rim.

But Leia, for all she was of his family, was not of his culture, and he had to remember that he loved her more than he loved his culture. “Ben is a good name,” he offered, and was rewarded with a small smile. 

Ben was a good name, and he was going to love the child no matter what Leia called the baby. You’re my only hope, Leia had said of Obi-Wan Kenobi, and now Ben Solo was going to be a new hope for Luke and Leia both.  
  


Ben was born with his skin tinged blue. He wasn’t breathing.

He did start breathing a few minutes later under the doctor’s firm hand, but that experience, Luke realized in hindsight, shaped how they dealt with Ben as a child—a mindset of _keep him safe because he’s fragile._

Ben was a curious child, getting into everything and everything. It took a distressingly long time for Luke and Leia to realize Ben had learned from Luke how to open a locked door with the Force. Luke, at the time, had been distracted by the running commentary behind him, and had missed Ben’s attentive eyes watching his uncle. 

_Use the Force so trivially on locks, one should not,_ Yoda was insisting.

 _I never understood that rule,_ said his father. _Why limit something so natural?_

_Sacred, it is. Used for trivial things, it should not be._

“It doesn’t feel trivial to me,” Luke mumbled, juggling a drooping Ben in one arm, groceries on the other arm, and a weighty sense of dead for the next political elections. A locked door was bringing him to about the end of his rope. “Hush, you two.”

“Who’re you talking to?” Ben asked.

“My friends,” Luke said, because now was not the time to explain he was talking to the ghost of his father and the ghost of the leader of the old Jedi order. “I’m going to put you down once we get inside, and then it’s straight to bed, okay?”

The lock unwound, and the door swung open. 

“Oh,” Ben said, burying his head in Luke’s shoulder, “like my friend talks to me in my head.”  
  


The memory of Ben’s words was enough to snap Luke out of meditation with a painful yank. Had Ben really been swayed by Snoke from so young? Or was it merely a child’s imaginary friends? There was no way of knowing, now. 

Luke, in all his arrogant wisdom, had thought at the time that Ben must be talking about imaginary friends. He had just started gaining self-confidence in following the Jedi’s teachings, and thought he had the answers to Force-related questions. How foolish. How destructive. How naive. 

There was no way of knowing about Snoke, but there was a way to make sure the arrogance of the Jedi did not pass itself on to another generation. A thought formed in Luke’s head, quiet for now, but building on itself as the minutes slipped by. 

The tree. The Jedi texts. Fire had destroyed so much of Luke’s life—his home on Tatooine, the corpse of his father, the academy. What was one more fire to Luke, at this point?

  
Luke had looked at the Jedi far more critically once Leia reluctantly agreed that her son needed some training, at least, so Ben had a philosophy of control to accompany his ever-growing power in the Force. 

“You let Darth Sidious rise unchecked!” Luke yelled, slamming down his books to face Yoda. “You kept yourself in solitude and failed to recognize what was happening under your nose!”

 _Mistakes, we all made,_ Yoda said, maddeningly calm. _Mistakes, you will make. Understand then, you will, the insidious nature of error._

“At least I won’t let a Sith Lord rise under my watch,” Luke growled, experiencing anew the disillusionment of a child discovering their parents were less than perfect. 

He realized, to his shame, that it sounded like he was referring to his father, not Darth Sidious, but Yoda did not correct his words. Yoda simply bowed his head and hummed. _Frustrated, you are, young Skywalker. Hold to your anger, you must not. Learn from it, yes, but hold to it, no. Release your anger into the Force, you must._

“ _Gah_ ,” Luke said, and stalked off to talk to his father.   
  


He had learned, in time, of the Jedi’s limited capacities during the early rise of the Empire, stretched across the galaxy and weakened by war. He thought he had forgiven them. He thought.

Then Ben fell, and Luke thought anew that the hubris of the Jedi inevitably led to the rise of the Sith, no matter the generation. So he withdrew the Jedi, and himself, for good. 

He equally missed and hated Obi Wan and Yoda. His father, he missed with far less complication, but Luke could not bear to look his father in the eyes after what Luke had done to Anakin’s grandson.  
  


He remembered his first days on Acht-To, resigning himself to a life of rocky solitude. 

He had left his ship on the beach, positioned deliberately in front of the rising tide. It sank within the hour. Still he watched from the beach as waves rushed in, until the whole beach was flooded with unending, crashing water. One could drown on this beach at high tide.

Luke hesitated before backing onto dry sand.

“You would think I would know better,” he told the assembled porgs, stepping with caution through the crowd. “But you would be wrong.”

He missed the Force like he missed his eyesight. It was his connection to his father, his sister, his nephew, his life. He tried to tell himself it was his old, innocent life he missed, not the Force, but knew deep down that was a half-truth at best. 

He immersed himself in the natural world to compensate. The Force had always carried a strong connection to nature, to the wild unknown, and when he felt the craggy, rolling hills deep in his bones, it was not dissimilar to the unflinching calm the Jedi sought. 

In fact, it was similar enough that Luke worried he was not cut off enough from the Force, and spend the next few days burying his mind away from any lingering touch of the Force. He would never allow himself to be tempted to action by the Force again; that only led to heartbreak and tragedy.

(No matter how achingly it pulled at his essence, his soul.)

Luke laid awake at night to crashing thunder that stirred the dark in his soul, all lightning and lashing out, and listened to more rain than he could have imagined as a boy slam into the roof of his little hut. The raging determination of the storm lasted nearly all night, giving way only to the predawn of the sunrise. It was balance, and a cleansing of the world. 

Understanding balance in nature was far easier than understanding balance in the Force. He knew he might learn from Yoda, should Luke ask, but as that was an option so far off the table, he would have to struggle through it on his own. 

“It’s not the same as nature,” he lectured to a baby porg left in the nest while its parents looked for food. “You can have half rain, half sun and be healthy, but you can’t have half dark, half light and be healthy.”

The baby porg blinked up at him, opening its mouth hopefully.

“We need to accept the darkness within us,” Luke conceded, throwing a bit of his cooked fish at the baby. “I’m good enough at that, Force knows, but that doesn’t mean I ought to be half dark.” He growled this last part, and the porg flapped backward in alarm.

Luke sighed and scooped up the baby. It cuddled into him with small, contented sounds. “I suppose this is where you tell me that balance is accepting the light in me, too, not just the darkness,” he mumbled, then stopped, and thought about it, and put the porg back down. 

“I’ve never been as good at that part,” he breathed, but stepped forward and let the light of the full sunrise fall on his shoulders anyways. 

It was—healing?

It was a start.  
  


He had avoided the beach for months, for he was afraid that if he went there, the tide would overtake him and he wouldn’t have the strength of will to leave.

It was a troublesome problem on an island planet. 

Luke watched the waves roll in, and thought, distantly, that if he stood at just the right spot on the beach, the waves might go over his head, but not long enough to drown him.

Luke slowly, carefully, built the fire to last; by the time he returned - and he would return - he would desperately need the warmth.

And then Luke went to stand on the beach, in just the right spot, as the tide rolled in.

It was already at chest height by the time he got there, lapping eagerly at the rough stones and dragging at his torso. He stood there and waited, grim and entranced, as his lungs crumpled under the sheer weight of cold and his mind drifted to younger days of freezing in the snow and waking in bloody, cold guts, as the water rose higher and higher until he was choking on seawater as his head drooped in sheer exhaustion.

For a time, he stood balanced on his toes, wavering precariously in the battering tide, as the last snatches of air found their way to him.

And then the waves closed over his head as he took one last, great breath. Time stopped and space folded and there was nothing but the cold and the dark and the ever-crashing water. For a pounding, grim moment, Luke considered the real possibility that he might drown here, too clumsy with numb pain to escape. And for an endless moment, he considered hoping for it.

But then, he was quite bad at hoping right now. A flicker, but - no. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Was that a perverse sort of hope?

And then the waves receded, as they always did, until Luke could struggle and drag his unwieldy body to the surface and choke on the heavy, sweet sea air that laid draped around the coast. He staggered out of the sea, slow with deep-set pain, and let the embers of the fire warm him until the bands around his chest eased and breathing was once again manageable.

The porgs stared accusingly back at him. “Yes,” he told them, pulling himself to a sitting position, “but I needed to do that.”

They blinked. “Never mind,” he grumbled, and felt more like himself than he had since -

-well. One tide of drowning was enough to survive for the day. Carefully, he folded the well-worn edges of pain back into a heart not nearly big enough to hold it, and let himself drift off to sleep in the flickering warmth of his makeshift fire. The porgs knew this much, at least; they huddled around his still form until he was simply one of several dozen twitching bodies.

He slept deeply, and woke up far more refreshed than an old man sleeping on uneven rocks had any right to be.

“Well,” he murmured, cupping his hands up into the sunrise, “that’s that, then.”

The tide was going out.  
  


Luke felt the turn of the seasons in his bones, summer cooling to autumn cooling to winter. It was always cold on Acht-To, but now it was colder. Porgs huddled down in packs, and Luke huddled down by himself. 

Spring came, eventually. Spring always came, eventually. 

He walked the craggy paths of his mountain range in almost-peace, learning from the firmness of the mountains, the transient eternity of the ocean tides, the heather in the springtime where grass met rock met sky. 

He thought of nothing, of everything, of most things in between. He thought of Ben, carefully and infrequently. He felt the familiar despair and shattered blame collect in his chest, crashing and pulsing and inexorably present.

Luke pulled himself to his feet and went to watch the tide roll in.

Many, many hours later, he watched it roll out again.

“Balance,” he mumbled wearily, and stood to prepare dinner.   
  


The balance was fragile. A fire in the morning rebalanced dead kindling to vibrant, snapping light that warmed, that protected, that destroyed, that killed. Then, out to the cliffs to watch the sea atop beds of scattered grass or cool stone. Back for milk, metal hand gripping perhaps a little too hard, then resting, then fishing, then lunch. 

So it went, day after night after day, until Luke’s world rebalanced into quiet, unsteady balance. If he thought of—

No. Balance. Balance in the untouched Force, balance in his broken heart. It was the only thing of his old values he felt he could maintain. 

“You are not busy,” Rey said pointedly, observing his routine. Luke startled at her voice, remembering distantly the frantic pace he had kept on ever since his aunt and uncle died, always balanced on the edge of disaster or narrow success. Luke could not imagine doing that again, now that he’d drawn back from it and found his peace in the steady, unrushed heartbeat of nature. 

Rey was anything but unrushed. Vibrant, tangled, fast to awe, fast to hatred, fast to love Rey rushed around like there was no tomorrow. She pushed him beyond all the boundaries he feared he could not face, pushed him halfway into mental breakdown. 

He hurried away from her. She followed. This was becoming a pattern.  
  


Rey. Was it instinct? The Force? Either way, something was wrong. No matter his pain, no matter his gruffness, he couldn’t let something happen to her while under his reluctant care. 

He rushed to Rey’s hut. 

Rey was with Ben. Ben, dressed all in black. Ben, who murdered innocent children and surely hunted down Force-sensitives like his grandfather before him.

Protect her. Protect him. 

The stone hut exploded, the Force reflexively flooding Luke with power. 

Rey whirled around, face still tear streaked, and Luke felt his father’s hand on his shoulder. _Let her be,_ Anakin said. _I’ve been watching her._

Luke didn’t trust himself in that moment, but he trusted his father. He left.

 _I love you, Luke,_ his father added. Luke shuddered and did his best to re-close himself off to the Force.

This was a spectacular failure, but there were more important things at hand. Rey turning on Luke in rightful anger. Rey leaving. Rey taking the ship, the only fast way off the island, with her. 

There was nothing left for Luke but meditation and the Force.

The Force was impossible to disengage from, now. He thought it had been hard the first time, after Ben Fell, but now it was so rooted in Luke that disengaging was about as efficient as ripping up the roots of a massive oak tree by hand. Too late, he realized that his years of connecting with the natural world in a place deeper than physical had only built his connection to the Force until its flooding release was inevitable.

The Force, now, was mountains and midnight storms and daybreak. It was everything. It was home. Luke breathed in, out, almost calm, and resolved to meditate until the power in him was at least somewhat back under his control.  
  


Luke groaned, head sinking into his hands. It took Yoda hundreds of years to become a Jedi; what was he thinking, to try to learn in only a few weeks? It seems so laughable as to be impossible.

Footsteps. Yoda settled beside him, humming in quiet contentment. “What troubles you, young Skywalker?” he asked, and if the lilt in his voice at the work Skywalker was pained, that was a question better left unanswered for the present moment.

Luke poured his heart out. He had always been called humble; really, he thought it might be more a lack of self-confidence than anything, and never had he felt it more piercingly than the present moment.

(Yet.)

“Hmm,” Yoda said as he finished. “Fond of impossibilities, you are. Impossible five years ago, it would have been, to be offworld and rebel and Jedi.” He rapped Luke’s shin with his cane. “Impossible, it may be. Impossible, it is, to fight the Empire. Yet here you are, hmmm?

Luke huddled into himself. “It’s not like that,” he tried to say. “It’s not...”

Yoda hummed and rapped Luke’s shin again, hard enough to startle him out of a measure of his misery. “Worry, you do, that I will die. Leave you no teacher, yes?” 

Luke opened his mouth, closed it, bowed his head.

“Hmm, yes. Feel it in the Force, I do. My time approaches, yes. Feel it too, you do. Learn, you must, that a teacher you always will have.” He stood, shuffling over to Luke, and poked him in the chest. “Your own teacher, you always are. Your own student, you always are. Listening, you must learn.”

Luke gritted his teeth. “That’s the problem,” he said. “All I’m learning is how to fail.”

“Precisely,” Yoda said, nodding. “Failure, your most important teacher is. Teaches you to try, it does. Teaches you to succeed.”

Luke struggled with that for a while — how could failure ever teach him to succeed? — and gave up.

(And failed.)

He failed Ben.

That was well enough to crush him.  
  


He learned, as he always did. He learned that Jedi Master Luke Skywalker was too destructive to trust with the soul of a child, with the soul of a galaxy. He had known this, had really always known this, but to have it so comprehensively, intimately demonstrated, to have it play out in the heart of the galaxy’s next hope—

Luke Skywalker had done enough damage, Luke knew. It was time to remove himself before he broke another soul, broke Leia’s soul, with the mishandling that had broken Ben. 

It was time to remove the Jedi before the mistakes of the past played out in full. 

_Luke_ , his father said, gripping his shoulders from behind, _don’t do this. My fall was my own fault. Ben’s fall is his own fault. Don’t destroy yourself like this._

“Ben,” Luke snapped, “fell because he saw me try to kill him. Don’t try to excuse me, father.”

Fingers dug deeper into his shoulders. _Luke—_

“Go away,” Luke said hoarsely. “Father, go away.”

It was a betrayal, to say these words. To say them to a man still fragile with self-hatred and ingrained unwantedness. He felt the pain in the Force as the words took, as his father flinched.

Hurting Ben was a betrayal. He would only hurt his family further by allowing them to stay near him.

Another presence approached. _Pain, you feel, young Skywalker. Release the pain, you must—_

“You,” Luke snarled. Yoda was not his father. He could afford to be harsh. “You dare tell me how I should feel when you and I both crushed all that is good about the Jedi. You in the height of your arrogance, thinking a Sith could never slip past you—“

 _You go too far, Luke,_ Anakin murmured. 

“—and me, thinking I should kill my sister’s son, your grandson,” Luke said, voice rising over top his father’s words. “I-“

Time. Stopped.

Grief, so potent as to be overpowering, screamed its way through the Force.

Leia.

 _Luke_ , Leia called, voice snapping across the billion billion miles between them. _Ben!_

Luke’s heart froze over with shame and grief. He didn’t answer.

Neither did Ben.

 _Ben!_ Leia cried, and Luke flinched at the despair in her voice. _Ben, answer me!_

Nothing. 

_Luke!_

_You need to answer her,_ Anakin said, hands on Luke’s shoulder going first tight than gentle. _You know she’d never listen to me tell her._

 _Blame, we all have, but his own choice, Ben Solo made,_ Yoda said. _Your fault, my fault, this is not entirely._

_Luke!_

Ben’s Fall had shattered Luke’s world. Now, he watched almost dispassionately as bits and pieces of his world fell to pieces in his hands, as his sister’s cries grew more frantic, as his heart froze over with brittle determination.

_—sister, you must—_

_—befits a Jedi, does not—_

Obi-Wan’s voice joined in from somewhere far distant.

_Luke!_

“No,” Luke said, cold and clear as winter. “I will not.” He drew his lightsaber. Considered it. Ignored the fog of noise and panic surrounding him.

Twitched his mechanical hand. Ignored his father’s fingers trying to twist the lightsaber out of his grip.

Hesitated.

_Luke. Luke!_

Leia’s voice got through. It always did.

He couldn’t do this to her. But neither could he stay and harm her further.

The lightsaber fizzled and spat as he threw it across the room, straight through Yoda’s head. 

“I am a Jedi no longer,” he said into the dead quiet. “Leave me be.”

And then, before anyone could react, before Luke lost his grip on the terrible, certain understanding of his final failure, he cut himself entirely off from the Force.

No Leia. No father. No Yoda. Only himself, alone in his sins, as it should be. 

They were better off without him.  
  


He packed quickly, lightly. He wouldn’t be coming back.

“Once upon a time,” he murmured, folding clothes, dark clothes, into a traveler’s pack, “there were Jedi who let the Sith rise in the height of their power. And then came a Jedi boy again, and turned on his own nephew.” The hate was thick in his voice, and he wildly did not think of who might be listening in the Force.

Losing his hand had been devastating, unfinishing. Losing the Force was magnitudes worse. He felt he had lost his soul.

(But he already had, when he thought to kill Ben.)

The disappearance of Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker was a quiet, rebellious thing. There was no fanfare, no tears, no goodbyes. Only a hurriedly-made, hurriedly-hid map (even now, he couldn’t abandon Leia completely) and the theft of a shuttle no one would miss until days later. 

And he was gone.

(He had failed.)

  
Luke dragged himself out of his meditation by degrees. Those memories made his heart, his limbs, his mind almost too heavy to operate. The way he had terrified Ben, lashed out at his father, silenced Leia—

There was a reason he kept to himself, these days. He knew his heart was bitter and damaged from the events of that day, damaged enough to merely lash out at anyone around him instead of do anything kind, anything right, anything good.

That was half the reason why he had been so terrified of Rey.

Rey, though. Rey had been open and determined, impatiently tolerant of his scabbed-over heart. She had been doing an impressive job of chipping away the weary determination to keep to himself, even, and that was no small task.

That was before he learned of her connection to Ben, to the Dark, to her impulses.

He thought no less of her. The self-hatred in his heart was too weighted to spread to another person, and Rey was bright and good for all the danger in her. 

The danger was real, though, and he was bitterly selfish. The Dark had haunted Luke’s steps since Ben Fell, urging despair some days and the destruction of Kylo Ren others, and Luke’s heart couldn’t take one more person falling. In this girl so unafraid of the pain of the Dark—

 _As you were not afraid of me,_ he thought he heard on the wind. 

Father.

He hadn’t heard his father’s voice in years. Luke had tried sealing himself back off from the Force, after Rey left, but that was like trying to shove a tidal wave into a water bottle. How he had done it the first time, even fueled by agonized certainty, he wasn’t sure.

(When he had taught Rey of the Force, something had come back alive in him, and it refused to die, now. Worse yet, he didn’t want that fragile thing to die.)

He buried himself in memory to distract himself from the heartbeat of the ocean, the visceral urge of the Porgs to care for their young, the siren call of the dark cave—all amplified through the Force to the point of overwhelming unless he focused firmly elsewhere. 

(In the far distance, someone was calling him. Leia? Father? Both? He ached to know more, ached almost enough to open up a little more to the Force.)  
  


Luke shook off the ash of the great old tree the way a butterfly shook off cocooned darkness. 

Yoda had left, but his words lingered. 

_The greatest teacher, failure is._

_Luke, we are what they grow beyond._

He was on the edge of something fragile and incandescent, something world-changing, grief-changing. He had walked this edge once before, in the throne room of the Emperor, cresting the line between falling and flying. 

He paced the edge again, eyes slipping closed to fathom the ephemeral.

Behind his eyes, he saw the corpse of the tree dissolve completely, dissolve into ash into dust into sand.

Tatooine sand. Home sand.

Sand swirled, took shape. 

Luke Skywalker, all of twenty two, stared at Luke, stared at the unkempt shame of his posture, stared at the shadows of the now-desolate island.

“You have a nightmare coming for you, boy,” Luke murmured. “You’ll fail your Leia’s son and teach yourself shame like there’s no tomorrow.”

The boy before him didn’t respond. Luke hardened a little. How dare this boy not react to his future. 

“You’ll teach yourself your limits in the worst way possible,” he grit out. No reaction. “You’ll ruin an innocent soul.” The boy nodded, slowly. 

At last, a response. 

“You’ll never forgive yourself,” Luke spat. 

Then, slower and gentler for the boy he used to be, he repeated it. “You’ll never forgive yourself.”

The boy stirred. Looked up. 

The boy’s eyes tore Luke’s soul to shreds. Raw hope, raw regret, raw everything, too raw, too knowing, too compassionate.

“I forgive you,” the boy said. Luke’s eyes opened, frantic to dismiss the specter. The boy remained, superimposed over reality.

“I forgive you,” the boy repeated, holding out his hands. The boy he thought he had lost for good when he failed Ben took a step closer. Luke wanted to scramble a step back, enforce the pained hardness of his heart, but—

But—

Was this how his father had felt aboard the second Death Star, so desperate to be loved, so resigned to failure?

Darth Vader in life had been a master of the Force, Luke his wary, observing student. _We are what they grow beyond. That is the true burden of all masters._

No. He could never forgive—

He knew he was able to forgive the worst of cruelties in his father. It ached to apply that logic to himself. It ached like ripping out his heart. It ached like coming home, Aunt Beru waiting at the gate for him with arms open wide.

“I never stopped learning,” the boy said, now nineteen, now fifty, now ten. “I am a student to all your error, and I forgive you.”

Luke felt himself shatter. “How? How can you forgive—“ he gestured to himself, “me?”

The child stepped into Luke until the artificial distance healed completely. 

_Because of hope,_ he thought, light in a way he hadn’t been in years. _And always and forever, because you are loved._

Luke Skywalker breathed in, fragile, and stronger than he had ever been.  
  


Hope trickled back into his galaxy, and with it, a certainty he had felt only in passing at the defeat of the Emperor settled in his chest, never to leave. 

( _Never,_ echoed the Force. _Never more to be lost again._ )

Rey was going to be alright. He had to believe that. It was Ben that most needed him, now. 

But he could not get off Acht-To without a ship, and Rey had left and his own ship had sunk years ago. He opened his mind to Leia to ask for help, and found his sister in deep distress. Ben was there, now. Leia needed help, now.

Footsteps, audible through the Force. A familiar presence settled lightly at Luke’s side - cautious, fragile, hesitant in a way it never had been since the early days after Endor.

The last of the enforced apathy around Luke’s heart shattered and blew away in the wind, never to be seen again. He turned to face quiet, electric eyes. “Hello, father.”

 _Luke,_ Anakin breathed, cupping Luke’s face and kissing his forehead, slow and solemn as melting snowflakes.

“I missed you,” Luke whispered, allowing himself a moment of pure communion.

“Leia, Ben—“ he started. 

_There is a way,_ his father said, taking hold of Luke’s hand and stirring the ashes of the tree. _Are you willing to die for it?_

“Of course.”

Anakin’s face flickered with grief, pride, sorrow. _As a ghost, I am part of the Force completely. My presence is a mere projection._

“Yes?”

His father drew Luke closer to his side. _The living can project themselves in the Force as far as they desire, but it requires them to completely merge themselves with the Force._

“That would—kill someone,” Luke murmured. “Corporal bodies are too fragile to hold the total power of the Force.”

 _It is, in essence, briefly becoming a Force Ghost on command at the cost of forever becoming one,_ his father said. _Luke, I don’t want you to die._

“Neither do I,” Luke said, tasting the words anew. “But I don’t want Leia or Ben or Rey or Leia’s people to die, either. He shifted, switched hands so that his mechanical hand laid in his father’s palm. “I am willing to die for the sake of my family. I always have been.”

 _I know,_ his father breathed _. I know. Luke, I will be with you every step of the way. Draw on my power and experience to make it to Leia and Ben in time._

“I want to die facing the ocean,” Luke said quietly. “It’s beautiful today.”

He brushed the final ashes of the dead tree away and took a last, living breath before making his way to the highest point of Acht-To, his father close at his side the entire way.  
  
  


He smiled as Ben raged, a smile that had gone past despair and out the other side. A smile that had found, deeper down than he thought possible, something beyond hope. 

Faith. Strong faith, pure faith, faith so strong it wasn’t even faith—it was sheer knowledge. He knew that there was, would always be good in Ben, and that it worth dying for. 

Ben raged against the Jedi, against Luke, against the light. “Amazing,” Luke said, weighted with the solid knowledge of fifty yards of blind, reckless mistakes, of hope, of joy, of love. “Every word of what you just said . . . was wrong.”

Behind him, he felt Rey drift boulders as if they were pebbles. She had the Force, and she had love. Together, they would serve her well. The future was in her hands, and Luke trusted it. If she needed help, he would be there for her as he hadn’t been in life.

Ben tried to kill Luke, as Luke had once thought to kill Ben. Luke let Ben have the moment, wrapped in the gift that in death, Luke would be there for Ben as Obi-Wan and Yoda and his father had always been there for Luke. 

Generations passed, empires rose and fell, but love for family would never fade away, not when Luke had anything to do with it.

“See ya around, kid,” he said gently, and let the projection drop.  
  


He gasped for air. Dying felt—strange. He had always thought it would be a fade-out, and it was, but it was also a transcendent fade-in, the Force opening to him as never before, welcoming him back forevermore.

The suns were setting, but he was rising, rising, rising, his soul once more in tune with the universe, every particle of him thrumming with the hope-despair-grief-joy-balance that has come to define his existence. He was rising, rising, rising, past his old and tired body, past his broken, grieving, mind, until all was light and shadow and deep, deep life.

He rose until he felt he could rise no more. He rose until he saw the length of the universe, until he inhaled light and exhaled stardust. He rose and rose into infinity—

—and fell, home at last, into the waiting arms of his father.

_Life may change, but it may fly not;  
Hope may vanish, but can die not;  
Truth be veiled, but still it burneth;  
Love repulsed—but it returneth._

_\- Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound_


End file.
